White Top Folk Festival was
one of four major folk festivals founded within a decade in the
Southeast after 1928. On August 15, 1931, several thousand people
attended the first White Top Folk Festival in Grayson County.
Organized by John A. Blakemore, a wealthy businessmen in the Abingdon
area, Annabel Morris Buchanan, a folklorist, and John Powell, a
world-renowned classical pianist, the festival consisted mainly of
instrumental and singing contests with some recreational dancing. The
next year, the festival expanded to two days of performances, craft
exhibitions, and a conference to celebrate all aspects of Appalachian
mountain culture. In 1935 more than 10,000 people attended the
festival to watch and hear more than 300 performers. There was no
festival in 1937 and the final two years drew small crowds. The
festival was held for the last time in 1939.

Powell and Buchanan envisioned the White Top festival as a means to
assert the authenticity of British-American culture. Performers were
limited to approved music in an attempt to root out any commercial
influences. In 1934 one reviewer noted that some 200 bands were
eliminated from competition "by reason of their evident leaning toward
what radio listeners now know as hill-billy music, in which the folk
tradition is caricatured." African American performers were not
allowed.